When was the last time you laughed hysterically during a philosophy lecture? The last time you doubled over in stitches during the Rabbi’s sermon?

In John Lennon and the Jews, Ze’ev Maghen takes his readers on an audacious, uproariously funny Magical Mystery Tour of the mind and heart. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance meets Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in this provocative, creative and stunningly original work that the Jerusalem Post likens to a “dazzling intellectual amusement park.”

A chance encounter at LAX introduces Maghen to a trio of Hare Krishna missionaries who turn out to be Israeli émigrés. They insist that Judaism is archaic, irrational, immoral and just downright stupid; that affiliating with the Jewish people in our modern, globalizing day and age is pointless and passé. Their adamant universalism and “everything is everything” rejection of their Jewish identity put the author in mind of his favorite Beatle’s famous lyric, “Imagine there’s no countries…and no religion too.”

John Lennon and the Jews is Maghen’s confrontation with Lennon’s vision of one-worldism and other in vogue beliefs that threaten Jewish continuity today. This work is a journey through centuries, countries, sitcoms, and ideas that will leave no thinking, feeling person unaffected. “You have never had so much fun cogitating,” writes one reader. “It’s like sitting in a yeshiva in front of a highly erudite rabbi – on mushrooms.”

• Paperback
• 326 Pages

"John lennon sang "Imagine no religion", and I'm definitely down with that.

Ever since my childhood, when i was dragged to high holiday services once a year - where my boredom was of such magnitude that is could only be alleviated by conjuring-up the 

vision of myself leaping headlong from the balcony to my own death on the spikes of the menorah below - I remember wondering what the point of all thus was.

I road a souped-up harley chopper right out of that neo-fundamentalist nightmare and into my red white-white-and-blue-american teenage dream (ok, it was a honda).

I drank, smoked, won frisbee-golf tournaments and lost my innocence.

Got a girl, named sue (really), she was terrific and methodist. 

I couldn't see one reason in the whole wide world why we shouldn't be together forever (she, on the the other hand, saw a reason, named chet).

I never believed jews were any better then anybody else (now I live smack in the middle of six million of them: I can assure you they're not)....

 What I am going to do here is spend a little time thinking out loud, struggling with what I see as some of the most important issues of our time (and by no means solely for Jews)

and I'd be honerd if you'd tag along for a bit and struggle together with me."